"It was weird out there. I couldn't feel the clubface on the last three holes after my tee shot on 16."
In the wake of his Van de Velde-ian collapse at the Cognizant Classic, Shane Lowry faced the media and didn't make any effort to hide the fact that he'd mentally seized up over the closing holes.
What to make of all this?
It is strange that a past Open champion and a Ryder Cup talisman can get such an incapacitating bout of the jitters on a run-of-the-mill PGA Tour stop up against a field of B-listers and recent Korn Ferry graduates.
Theoretically, when you've won the Claret Jug and a WGC event, scooping the Cognizant Classic trophy - formerly the Honda Classic trophy and even more formerly the Jackie Gleason Inverrary Classic trophy - shouldn't be such a daunting step to take.
But several years have elapsed since those victories. Lowry's desperation for a win - any win - is looming over him to such an extent now that getting over the line in any tournament will probably be an excruciating experience for everyone concerned, not least those watching over here.
It's three and a half years since he won on his own now, at the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth where he edged out Rory McIlroy by a stroke, the kind of big-ticket event that any journeyman player - of the type he competed against yesterday - would kill to have on their CV.
In 2024, he did win the doubles tournament with Rory McIlroy at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans but that has the air of novelty event and it was his playing partner who took most of the credit. It's 11 years since his only solo win on American soil at the Bridgestone Invitational in Firestone, just under a year before he held the 54-hole lead at the US Open in Oakmont.
He was the second-highest ranked player in the field here. None of the top-25 had bothered to tee off this week. Ryan Gerard - ranked 26 - was the top ranked player.
Lowry's loyalty to the event seems to be largely on account of the fact that it's just down the road from him. Brooks Koepka was the highest profile player to enter this year and that must be in part due to his determination to make amends with the tour elders.
The shallowness of the field was underlined by the commentators continually referencing what the payday would mean for Lowry's playing parnter, Austin Smotherman.
Make no mistake, this tournament looked to be over with three holes remaining. Over in the States, many seasoned golf fans had probably turned over to Fox News to see how the war was going.
The online trolls who harbour animus towards Lowry for various reasons - many of their ilk were probably roaming around Bethpage - were on the brink of switching it off in disgust.
Lowry's hot streak around the turn, where he rustled up three birdies and an eagle between the ninth and 13th holes, had put him in control of the tournament.
His luck appeared to be in. A horrible shanked tee shot on the difficult sixth hole had somehow stayed out of the water and he holed a 20-footer for a miraculous par. He groaned after pulling his tee shot towards the bunker on the relatively easy 12th but it hopped out of the sand and he proceeded to make birdie.
He had navigated the difficult par-three 15th hole masterfully, even giving himself a reasonable chance of birdie, which were exceptionally rare on that hole.
By now, Nico Echavarria's early momentum had long since stalled and the stats boffins were giving Lowry a 95% chance of winning as he strode to the 16th tee box.
Then came the shot. The awful harbinger of everything that was to follow. A shot so bad it sent shockwaves all around the course and immediately emboldened his rivals up ahead.
"This is in the water," Wayne Riley announced, approximately, 0.00001 seconds after Lowry's iron connected with the ball.
One graphic has been doing the rounds highlighting where every drive finished on that hole over the weekend. It's just a big splodge of blue, black and red arrows on the fairway, with a scatter of isolated wild ones over on the left side and a few dodgy ones flirting with the water's edge on the right.
And then, marooned out on its own in the bottom corner, is Lowry's three-iron. Dropping off the back of the chasing pack, like Sonia at the Olympic final in '96.
That he chose to take iron on a difficult par-four seemed like excessive conservatism to some. One thought of Padraig Harrington's insight, in the wake of McIlroy's disaster on the 13th at Augusta last year, that it's the supposedly 'risk-averse' shot choice that get you into the most trouble.
But then Lowry reminded us afterwards that he'd been bashing three-iron down there every day of the week. It was the same strategy he had adopted on the hole on the previous three days, and it had yielded a birdie on Thursday and two pars on Friday and Saturday.
He came close to Van de Velde-ing the hole [triple-bogey] after another poor shot with his third but rescued a double after a masterful bunker shot. But by then everything had changed. Echivarria, suddenly looking chipper, pushed his shot closer to the water than he likely intended but it stayed dry and gave him a decent birdie chance, which he rattled into the cup.
There was an almost stomach churning inevitability to what happened next. The audience heard a mumbled expletive at the moment the shot tracer began to tail the right. It was closer to dry land on the bank opposite the green, where Jimmy Stanger's ball had somehow landed a half hour earlier.
And that was that. Many couldn't watch after that. This writer's brother - who feared the worst early doors on Sunday - switched off and went to bed as soon as the shot tracer on 17 bent to the right.
The week underlined again, if it wasn't already obvious, that Lowry has a Sunday problem. If the double-bogey on the 72nd in Dubai was bad, this was orders of magnitude worse.
On the putting green before the round, it was noticed that Bob Rotella was part of Lowry's entourage for the week. The renowned golf psychologist won't be including this week's final round on his own showreel but he may have his work cut out for him now.
